Western Railroad Discussion > Coor beer traffic question

Does anybody know,how much "coor beer" is now ship by
rail compare to 25 years ago..........

Thanks

JLSeale

less by a long shot i would imagine, with more beers being made closer to the consumer, with the merger with miller, even before, that , concentrate was shipped to elkhorn w virginia?

LandN1971 Wrote:
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> Does anybody know,how much "coor beer" is now ship
> by
> rail compare to 25 years ago..........
>
> Thanks
>
> JLSeale

If you mean "Coors" beer, from Golden, Colorado, the answer is: less.
Coors had only one, and then three locations making their product.  So, shipping by rail made sense for longer hauls.  When Coors merged with Miller, they began making Coors at Miller breweries, which means the product was made closer to the consumer, so the long haul advantages of rail were lost.  Coors still ships beer by rail, but less than they did before the Miller merger.   BSB

Also think there was a problem with the life of it once brewed due to the fact it did not have some process that allowed longer shelf life.
Due to this some states would not let it in, WA was one as we had to go across the boarder to ID and bring it in. Think it tasted better
due to it not being avalible localy.  This may have  just been a rumor but it was in the very early 70s this was still going on.

I believe Coors beer like many products is/was ' shipped ' by rail vs ' ship ' as that would make me initially think of an ocean going transportation system.  

dan Wrote:
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> less by a long shot i would imagine, with more
> beers being made closer to the consumer, with the
> merger with miller, even before, that ,
> concentrate was shipped to elkhorn w virginia?

Harrisonburg, VA. They used to ship beer concentrate from Golden, CO to VA in tank cars, that were essentially giant thermos bottles. They ran on ATSF east to KC, then interchannged to NS, ran through Louisville, KY, down the Rathole to Harriman, Jct., then back up via Bristol, TN & Roanoke, VA to Harrisonburg.

The cars were white, with a large insulating box ontop of the loading appeture. I will see if I can find an image of one from the collection later today.

Regards,
Russ
 

think some varieties made namely, coors banquet beer are only made with rocky mountain spring water, the original... er Argo tunnel mine waste...

but those insulated box cars when loaded full with beer, the temperature would stay pretty fixed for weeks inside those things.

as for the Washington thing, i think that is hocus pocus,  maybe it wasn't pasteurized

wasn't smokey and bandit about Coors.

before Coors went national many consumers did weird things to get them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/17 08:23 by dan.

those coors beer tanks ended up being stored on the slrg, don't know if all of them are out of work, i'll have to google coors production

NSTopHat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> dan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > less by a long shot i would imagine, with more
> > beers being made closer to the consumer, with
> the
> > merger with miller, even before, that ,
> > concentrate was shipped to elkhorn w virginia?
>
> Harrisonburg, VA. They used to ship beer
> concentrate from Golden, CO to VA in tank cars,
> that were essentially giant thermos bottles. They
> ran on ATSF east to KC, then interchannged to NS,
> ran through Louisville, KY, down the Rathole to
> Harriman, Jct., then back up via Bristol, TN &
> Roanoke, VA to Harrisonburg.
>
> The cars were white, with a large insulating box
> ontop of the loading appeture. I will see if I can
> find an image of one from the collection later
> today.
>
> Regards,
> Russ
>  

Actually on the NS Roanoke District at Coors Crossing just south of Elkton, Virginia, not Harrisonburg, which is nearby but on the former Chesapeake Western.  Now a full brewery, making Coors Light among other beers but not Coors Banquet, which is still made only in Golden.

IIRC, refrigerated trucks were de-regulated and with that many west coast loads of produce moved to CO and instead of going back empty they were allowed to carry refrigerated Coors  back.  This ended the Santa Fe's west coast haul.

Anyone know what cities they are still shipping beer to, from the Golden brewery?

mapboy

dan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> as for the Washington thing, i think that is hocus
> pocus,  maybe it wasn't pasteurized

=====================

I don't know about Washington. . . 

but it was true that Coors beer wasn't sold in Oregon for a long time -- not until the 80's, I think. 

The ostensible reason was it wasn't pasteurized, while the conspiracy claim was that Coors wasn't allowed into Oregon because their brewery wasn't unionized, and so the unions in Oregon were able to apply enough political pressure to keep it out. 

FWIW, as a young teenager in the early 60's I lived on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, which was dry. 

The Tribal Council, in all their wisdom, decided a nice source of income would be to open a small package store in the middle of the "Rez". By "small" I mean a room maybe 15 x 12 feet in dimension. 

The first year it was in operation it became the largest single retail outlet for Coors Beer. . . . in the world!! 


 

Used to chuckle, the inbound San Jac local on the Santa Fe used to drop 3-5 cars per week of insulated boxes
full of Coors into Hemet CA. Guess the older crowd used to do more than play bingo.

Out

railstiesballast Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> IIRC, refrigerated trucks were de-regulated and
> with that many west coast loads of produce moved
> to CO and instead of going back empty they were
> allowed to carry refrigerated Coors  back.  This
> ended the Santa Fe's west coast haul.

The interstate movement of primary agricultural commodities (i.e. fresh fruits and vegetables) by truck was never regulated.  The famers and ranchers had enough political clout to prevent that. 

One reason for the diversion of FF&V to motor movement was that the rail rates were strictly regulated and held constant despite market conditions.  The truck rates moved with the market.  Obviously, the truckers got the business.

 

Thanks for the more complete background.
But the topic was the empty backhaul of beer.
Maybe what changed was that the Coors traffic managers discovered how low the rates on empty backhauls could go.
Now I wonder if an aggressive BNSF marketing department could make a service for reefers going east with produce and coming west with Coors utilizing their SP-DRGW trackage rights.

Coors wasn't shipped in reefers but that doesn't mean it couldn't be and the other thing is that in the
days of old much beer was dropped right at the distributor's siding. This wouldn't do much for accumulating
cars for anything near a unit back haul.

Out

In the late 60's and early 70's, the railroads that handled Coors beer from Golden, Colorado, bought a fleet of 60-foot insulated, load divider equipped boxcars mostly built by Pacific Car and Foundry to handle the beer business.  These cars could be identified by the stencilling by the side doors "When Empty, Return to Agent, C&S Golden Colo."  There were 6 or 7 Coors distributors in Southern California and they all received their beer daily by rail.  The loads of beer were pulled from Coors at Golden and into Denver by the C&S, a BN subsidiary.  Most of the cars moved South on C&S to Trinidad then ATSF to Southern California points. Some beer went further South on C&S/FWD to Dalhart, then RI-SP to Southern Arizona.  I heard estimates that Coors shipped 50 to 70 carloads of beer every day from Golden.
Several things came together to affect the Coors traffic- first, Coors made some "political" mistakes and irritated some special interest groups, such as gays and womens groups,,
causing them to boycott  the brand,   and then Coors merged with Miller Brewing and began producing their beer locally instead of supplying the West from only Golden, Colorado. Coors had also become such a huge customer that they were able to negotiate lower rail rates under deregulation and many rail pricing people felt the beer traffic was not profitable.
The result of all these factors was the loss of all that business over about a 10 year period.

Norm    

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

railstiesballast Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for the more complete background.
> But the topic was the empty backhaul of beer.
> Maybe what changed was that the Coors traffic
> managers discovered how low the rates on empty
> backhauls could go.
> Now I wonder if an aggressive BNSF marketing
> department could make a service for reefers going
> east with produce and coming west with Coors
> utilizing their SP-DRGW trackage rights.

Marketing and market development are a significant weak spot for our railroads.  They simply don't do it well.

closing raton may not have helped, and rr's reluctance to run locals for a few cars

Back when, Coors had strict controls on their transporters and distributors concerning the temperature that their product would be maintained to.  For example, if a Coors inspector found a distributor's coolers were not maintaining the beer temperature within a relatively small temperature range, Coors could essentially terminate the distributor's contract to sell Coors product on the spot.  Understand, back then in the 1970's, having a Coors distributorship was the closest thing to having a license to print money that anyone other than the US Treasury could have.  Most Coors distributors rapidly became multi-millionaires back then--when a million dollars was a really big deal.

To understand what a powerhouse Coors was in the 1970's--the Golden brewery was the biggest production single brewery in the U.S. then, and Coors Construction was the largest general contractor operating in Colorado--and Coors Construction only did construction work for the brewery, the Coors Porcelain Plant, and Coors Container (the latter making all of the the Coors beer cans).  At that time, Coors Container was one of the 10 largest consumers of aluminum in the world.  Both Coors Container and Coors Porcelain got a lot of materials in by rail, and probably still do.  Oh, and Coors Porcelain?  It supposedly made (probably still makes) more profits than the brewery.  They made everything from lab equipment to products for the space program.  Chances are, you are sitting within a few hundred feet, at most, of a Coors Porcelain product.  For decades, they were the largest US producer of porcelain insulators for electric power lines.  

All of that, until Miller purchased the Coors beer part of the business, was a private family-owned corporation.  

And, yes, a whole lot of CORX (Coors reporting mark) cars are stored on the SLRG.  If one wanted a near perfect potable water storage tank, one of those cars would be it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/17 14:36 by WW.